


Loneliness

by lightsway



Category: Prince of Persia (Video Game 2008)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-06
Updated: 2012-12-06
Packaged: 2017-11-20 11:30:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/584940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightsway/pseuds/lightsway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Slight spoilers for the epilogue of the game. In the depths of night, Elika finds herself thinking of the Prince and the grand adventures she could have been joining him on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loneliness

**Author's Note:**

> Requested by my friend Alden to help me get out of a writing slump I recently found myself in. I feel like I didn't do as good of a job as I could have on showing the strength of character Elika possesses, but I couldn't work it in there as well as I wanted to. I hope everyone enjoys it anyway!

He had promised to write to her when he left. It had almost been an afterthought, something he called to her as they waked their separate ways, but somewhere terrifically deep down, she had hoped he’d meant it. She had a kingdom to run, people to gather and lead, and her duty as their queen came first. It always had, and it always would, come first.

She awoke early in the day to oversee the reconstruction, helping where she could. She would walk amongst the people and try to lift their spirits, raise their confidence. They asked questions, so many questions, and sometimes she simply didn’t have answers. But she tried her best, kept her mind occupied during the day, found distractions to hold her attention.

The nights, though, were far more difficult than she could have imagined. At night, her thoughts were only idly about the goings-on of her people. In the darkest part of the night, when she was lying alone in her bed, her thoughts drifted to him. How easy it would have been to cast aside her duties and travel the world with him, see other cities and people and lifestyles, traverse all the various terrain he had told her about…

Perhaps even see the ocean.

The nights were warm, but a strange chill gripped her in these moments. It would have been so easy, but she knew that, had she gone, guilt would have eaten her alive. Their adventures would have been plagued by the persistent need to go back and attend to her responsibilities. She loved her people, and she needed them as much as they needed her.

If only he would write to her. She felt as though a single letter would ease her mind, put to rest her burning desire to be wherever he was, experience whatever he was. Yet each day went by and she received nothing. Not a letter, not a message sent with any of the newcomers, not a single strand of evidence that he had so much as breathed in her direction. And though she tried desperately to keep her head up, to remain strong and not let her inner despair get the better of her, it wore her down a little more every day, doubt niggling away at her brain.

She was a strong woman, though, and she didn’t let it show. Her people needed a leader they could trust to face anything proudly and fiercely, and she knew she could. She proved it to them every single day.

It was the nights. Always the nights…

Eventually, she let herself believe that she was getting used to his absence, to the absence of anything to remind her of him. The sharp pain that once pierced her chest when she thought about him was now a dull ache. It still hurt, but significantly less. To her, this was a step towards moving on.

Until the day she was in the nearly-completed palace, at a table in the library, studying up on all the things she had missed in the downfall of her kingdom. A messenger came to her with a package wrapped tightly with a thick cloth and tied with twine. It simply had her name on it, and the messenger insisted on being present while it was opened, lest it be something dangerous.

‘Dangerous’ was the last word she would use to describe this package, except, perhaps, to her proud facade, for wrapped in the cloth and bound so tightly it was near impossible to open was a seashell. She only knew it was a seashell because his letter told her so.

You’re a long way from the sea, Princess, so I’m bringing it to you. This seashell contains the crashing of the waves; put it to your ear, and you’ll hear it. Live the sea this way until we can go see it together.

Smiling, she held the letter tightly in one hand, rereading the words over and over as she put the shell up to her ear.


End file.
